‘I’d hoped to capture the graphic chaos in the window. What I found was an even more tangled scene’: Michael Krupka’s best phone picture | Photography

Mr.Michael Krupka had driven past the Via Bicycle repair shop in Philadelphia for years before venturing inside. As a photographer rather than a cyclist, he was drawn to the jumble of frames and parts in the front window. “My father was a machinist and when I was a child we had a workshop at home where he could repair just about anything mechanical he came across,” Krupka recalls. “As an artistic child, I did not inherit these skills, but I have an aesthetic attraction to machines and mechanical objects.”

Krupka was out that day on what he describes as an “intentional photo hunt.” He asked permission from a guy who was repairing a bike near the entrance. “He just shrugged his shoulders and moved on,” Krupka says. “I had hoped to capture the graphic chaos on the backlit window. What I found was an even more tangled scene, with even more bicycles in the foreground, which I used for the bottom third of the composition,” he says. “The plan also has a sort of maze or puzzle element, a sort of puzzle in which there might be interesting things to find.”

Krupka adds that the inclusion of color would have “significantly reduced the impact of the geometry of the frames, wheels and seats. The blue-gray color adds a layer of depth and energy, and also has that touch of nostalgia. I would bet a lot of us rode bikes when we were young.”